


Between the Shadow and the Soul

by evilgrrl



Series: The Shadow and the Soul [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Analysis, F/M, Inspired by Poetry, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Psychological Drama, Psychology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 12:35:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15291648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilgrrl/pseuds/evilgrrl
Summary: “I love you, as certain dark things are to be loved. In secret, between the shadow and the soul.” - Pablo Neruda~ ~ ~Kylo Ren loved Rey as certain dark things are to be loved, even though she was a thing of the Light.When he met her, he had realized that his life of loneliness and need could be over, *if* he has the strength to do what he knows he needs to.~ ~ ~This story is mirrored by a short one-shot from Rey's point of view.~ ~ ~





	Between the Shadow and the Soul

**Author's Note:**

> I used the quote from Pablo Neruda as a prompt. It was from a list of quotes about darkness that I looked up for the express purpose of finding a writing prompt, and it worked marvelously. 
> 
> According to Wikipedia, Neruda, born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), was better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda. He was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
> 
> Sincere thanks to @Darrah19, @GemDelimm and @thekellicassidy to beta reading this story. Their suggestions helped a lot! 
> 
> I am also deeply thankful for the support of my friends and family in my current writing, especially C. and D. My twitter Reylos, I love you too.
> 
> ~ ~ ~

“I love you, as certain dark things are to be loved. In secret, between the shadow and the soul.” - Pablo Neruda

 

Kylo loved Rey as certain dark things are to be loved: in secret, between the shadow and the soul. She was a thing of Light, but Light and Darkness were reversed in Kylo's world. The Dark provided power, protection, control. Love was disdained as a thing that made you weak, and it was imperative to avoid everything that made you weak. Weakness of any kind was just a way for someone or something to hurt or kill you. 

Rey would not use love against him. But Snoke would. Snoke had never hesitated to use anything against Kylo, especially love. 

Had Kylo loved his master? It would have been difficult for him to say. Snoke was cruel and imperious. Kylo had feared and respected him. He had hungered for Snoke's approval and recognition, longed for Snoke to see and acknowledge him. But, in some small, shadowy part of Kylo's heart, he had loved Snoke -- the way an abused child loved their parents. He had loved and hated Snoke, hiding both emotions away from even himself. 

Naturally Snoke had used that against him. So love was, in reality, a weakness, as Snoke said it was: a flaw in his character. Love had been something that helped keep Kylo powerless against his master. Because, as much as Snoke had torn him down, hurt him, and lied to him, Snoke had also taken care to praise him and build him up, to flatter and pretend affection. And Kylo, being merely human and not the monster he accused himself of being, had loved him. What child could really hate a nurturing parent?

Kylo had believed he hated his actual parents -- at least as much as he hated himself. If Kylo's parents did not love him, it was because he himself was unlovable. If he were unlovable, it was because his parents had made him that way. And if he would never be loved, then it was pointless to continue living, because living was unbearable without love. 

As Kylo had grown up, his anger and confusion had roiled together with his feelings of rejection, disappointment, resentment and fear, until they all became one toxic emotion. It manifested as depression in the boy, and bitterness toward his family. 

Anger and angst are common in adolescents, and they probably would have developed in Kylo on their own, moody boy that he had been. But Snoke's insidious influence on Kylo's mind – vulnerable through the Force – had ensured their development. 

Despite the swamp of his emotions, Kylo had fought the Darkness, even though Snoke had told him through their connection that it was futile to resist. At some point, he himself had come to believe falling to it was his destiny. His parents had said so to each other -- behind closed doors when they thought he could not hear. Later, his classmates at the academy had whispered it to each other as well.

So, at the time he finally did fall -- when Luke had looked into his sleeping mind and saw how strong the call of the Darkness had become -- it had seemed inevitable. Everyone expected him to be a monster. It was a relief to finally give in and do what everyone had silently expected him to do. 

After he and his friends had killed the other boys who sided against him, he had made sure he would never be tempted to go back -- by burning Luke's Jedi Academy. It was the final step to ensuring his family's complete rejection of him. They didn't want a bitter, vengeful young man, and now he didn't want them either. And how would he be able to live with himself, knowing he had dishonored his family's name? He would not corrupt them further with his evil nature.

So he had joined Snoke, at long last, after years of his appeals to Kylo's sense of importance, his pride, and his ego. Snoke had found him before he had even been born, nurtured him during the times his family had left him alone -- unwanted -- as a child. Now it was time to repay Snoke's favor.

Snoke had taken in Kylo and his friends, fed them, housed them, given them the best tools and training, and sworn them to the First Order. Snoke would make sure that Kylo lived up to his full potential. Unless that potential included killing and surpassing his master in the Sith tradition, of course. Luckily for Snoke, he had a talent for twisting things. He had twisted an angry, frightened boy into a cruel and driven man. And he had made Kylo love him for it. . . until Rey.

Kylo had decided to kill Snoke when Rey's fingers had brushed his. More than their minds had joined during that touch. Their mutual loneliness and need had drawn them together with the force of gravity. Then the transcendence of their bond had made space itself permeable. 

Kylo had found his companion piece, someone who could understand the pain of his abandonment, because she had felt the same. Rey was someone without family, someone who didn't really belong anywhere, like him. 

He had wanted nothing more than to be with Rey, and apparently, she felt the same, because she had come to him in a single person escape pod. He wished the bond had opened again before she had done that, because he would have told her not to come yet. When she arrived aboard the Supremacy, she had left herself no defense against Snoke. She had signed her own order of execution, and now Kylo had to find a way to cancel it. 

When Kylo had taken Rey into the Throne Room, he had not yet conceived of a way to kill Snoke. He desperately wanted to protect her, but felt almost physically incapable of acting against his master. What had pushed him off the ledge of his paralysis was Snoke's claim that he had been the one to connect their minds in the Force bond. 

It had been a lie, of course. The bond had created itself, mysteriously, miraculously. It had been conceived in Kylo's interrogation room, when Rey had resisted Kylo's mind probe and pushed into his mind instead. 

It wasn't simply a matter of physical actions producing a reaction, though. The Cosmic Force had brought Rey into being so she could to rise to meet Kylo's Darkness. They were two planes of reality that depended on each other for existence. They defined each other's natures, the way brightness limned shadow. The Force had designed them to fit together, in all the ways that two people can. 

Snoke had discovered the bond and found a way to use it against them. He fueled Kylo's torment, knowing that Rey would be aware of his suffering through the bond. The Light within her, and the nature of her rapport with Kylo, had been such that she would not be able to resist reaching for him. 

When Snoke said he himself had created it – this connection that was so personal, so intimate, and meant so much to each of them – Kylo suddenly became aware of Snoke's manipulation, not only in this instance, but throughout the years they had been together, and even before, when Snoke had merely been a voice in his ear.

In that moment, he realized that everything Snoke had ever said to him, criticism or praise, approval or rebuke, had been said in order to create the desired effect in Kylo. Snoke had designed and played him the way a composer creates and plays a symphony. Kylo finally recognized Snoke's love and encouragement for the lies that they were. 

After he had killed Snoke, Kylo and Rey had fought together back to back, like the left and right hands of the same body, connected through the heart. After it was over, Kylo had no thought but to go to her. And he started to. Until he saw Snoke's throne. It reminded him of all the sacrifices he had made over the years, the pain he had endured, and the pain he had caused others, in pursuit of his goal.

He had devoted everything he had, and everything he was, to the Dark side. To turn his back on it now would mean losing too much. Forsaking the Dark side would mean that his father's death was for nothing. The deaths of his fellow padawans at Luke's academy would have been for nothing. The way he had borne Snoke's nightmares and whispered thoughts and bitter misanthropy would have been meaningless, would be meaningless. It would prove that he had made all the wrong decisions. He could not bear it. 

If he took the Throne, however, he could prove that he had made the right choices all along, and that everyone had been wrong about him. It would demonstrate how powerful he had become, show all the things he had accomplished. Without Snoke, he would be free to rule the way he wanted, to create a new Pax Romana, and enforce that peace through blood and war. He had given up on love and happiness years ago, focusing only on what was possible for him to achieve. Before Rey, he had been so certain of his path. 

Now, though, he was not sure that he could bear that life any more than he could bear deserting the Dark side. It would be lonely and joyless. He would become a slave to his responsibilities just as he had become a slave to Snoke. So he had appealed to the one person who could make it bearable for him. He had asked her to take his hand and join him. 

She had promised she would help him. And he needed her. He had no one else. If she were his, he would be able to do anything. He knew she wanted him too, or she wouldn't have come to him. She wouldn't be like everybody else, more interested in what he could do for her than in him for his own sake. She cared about him, and she knew how it felt to be abandoned.

When he had turned to Rey and held out his hand, he had thought she would take it. But all she could talk about was stopping the attack on the fleet. She didn't care what he had already done for her, only about what he could do next to help her and the Resistance.

But he hadn't given up hope just yet. If he could make her see the necessity of letting go of the past, she might still be open to him and what he had to offer. The Resistance was as good as destroyed. If he called off the attack on the fleet now, it would make a difference to the handful of people it would save, but they would inevitably try to recreate the rebellion, which would just perpetuate the eternal conflict. It would be much better to start over completely. The wants and needs of the whole galaxy outweighed the wants and needs of a few.

Rey wouldn't really miss those people she called her friends in the Resistance, no matter what she believed. Firstly, she hadn't known them that long. How long had it been – less than a week? Secondly, she had been close to Leia, but he knew his mother had been lost when the Raddus was attacked, so she was gone. Dameron, the cocky pilot, was not a true friend to her, nor was the possessive FN 2187, traitor that he was. With them gone, it would be easier for her to let the past die and commit to their new life together. 

Rey, however, had not yet been able to exorcise the demon of her own needs. She was clinging to the past, to the parents she never had, the life she had never led, and the promise of freedom the Rebellion had given her in vain. He sensed that what was holding her back most was her long, futile belief that her parents had loved her and were coming back for her someday. 

To her, they represented the love and acceptance she had longed for her entire life, but her belief was preventing her from accepting the real love and acceptance he was offering now. She needed to face the reality that he would be her family, not some nameless strangers she had fantasized about. Something inside her believed that if her mother and father hadn't loved her, she wasn't worth loving, but Kylo knew better.

He forced her to admit what she already knew: that her parents had deserted her – to say it out loud. They were nobody to her. But it hadn't changed her mind the way he had thought it would. Even then, she still clung to her outdated sense of morality, of good and evil. She wasn't yet ready to reach for the future she had seen in their shared vision. 

Not only that, Kylo was beginning to be afraid that she too was more interested in what he could do for her and her friends than in him. It seemed she just wanted to use him for his abilities, like everyone else. 

Before he'd had a chance to tell her how he felt, how he would make sure she was never alone again, she had reached for his grandfather's lightsaber with the Force. Why had she done that? Did she mean to kill him with it, since she had no intention of joining him after all?

Seeing her reach for it, he instinctively reached for it too. He wasn't afraid of her, but he couldn't just let her take it and leave. He didn't want her to leave at all. Besides, it should have been by right. 

Kylo, entrenched in his own viewpoint, was unable to see how he himself was refusing to let go of the past just as much as Rey was. 

All Kylo's passion and frustration went into his tug of war with Rey over the lightsaber. Nominally they were battling over the lightsaber, but on a deeper level, both were trying to impel the other to acknowledge the rightness of their own belief. 

Then the Force had pushed them apart, just as it had separated them with a chasm in the ground on Takodana. Rey had been tempted to fight him to the death there. And he had felt the first stirrings of love, wanting to take her with him (by force, if necessary) as he had before. And the Force had prevented them from making these disastrous mistakes. 

In the Throne Room, the lightsaber itself split apart rather than choose to accompany either of them, and the explosion had rendered them both unconscious. When Kylo had come to, he had sensed Hux's deadly intent toward him. He was able to dismiss that concern as soon as he was awake, as Hux was a coward; but then he had to come up with a plausible explanation of what had happened to Snoke. 

He had to tell Hux a lie about who had killed the Supreme Leader. In the heat of the moment, furious with Rey for what he saw as her rejection of him (as always, he was never good enough), he told Hux that Rey had killed Snoke, as implausible as that was. 

Kylo immediately shoved his feelings of regret, abandonment and loss down into a desire for the absolute destruction of what remained of the Resistance, including Rey. He felt the same rash anger he had exhibited towards his parents when they had left him on his own again, when they had sent him away. All of his self-awareness disappeared, and he was locked into his pattern of furious raging. 

He had been trained to focus on pain and other unpleasant emotions in order to draw power from the Dark side of the Force, but this was more of a habitual reaction than a strategy. Once he started going down this spiral of ill-temper, it was difficult for him to pull out of it.

It was like when Snoke had ordered him to remove his helmet during his audience. Kylo had felt deep shame and humiliation. He himself must be something broken for his mentor to ridicule and revile him. To call him a child in a mask. Then he had angered Kylo, and punished him when Kylo rose to defend himself. 

As he had been trained to do, Kylo had considered his position carefully as he stared at his helmet in the turbo-lift leaving Snoke's chamber. Then he had called up all those overwhelming feelings he had just experienced, and pulled as much power from them as he could. He had allowed them to take him over again – given in to them -- driving him to smash his helmet against the wall repeatedly. His rage and anger had enabled him to destroy the helmet completely, and find the resolve to destroy the Raddus, with Leia on it. That would re-establish him in Snoke's good graces. 

Kylo had fully intended to go through with it. He hadn't felt stronger after he had killed his father, the way Snoke had promised. He'd only felt worse. But surely killing her would fulfill his destiny. He didn't love her anymore. By killing her, he would be killing that weak part of himself that had loved her. 

Then, right before he was going to fire, he felt her through the Force. She wasn't cowering in fear, the way he had imagined she would be, the way he had wanted her to be. She was afraid, but not of him – for him. At this moment near her death, her worry had been about him. His mother still loved him. She had wanted him to come back to her, even then, as he was preparing to kill her. And he hadn't been able to do it. 

If he had been a little quicker, he could even have protected the Raddus from the attack. But his wingmen were too fast, and he had been too startled to react, much less make a conscious decision.

Kylo's real failure wasn't in killing his father, or his inability to kill his mother. It was his unwillingness to learn from these experiences. But he had been too invested in the Dark side to let it go easily. It would take more than even this to change him.

 

Love and fear had long gone together for Kylo Ren. Back when he had been called Ben Solo, his parents had both loved and feared him. He had loved, then feared, his uncle. Consequently it should have been no surprise to Kylo to find himself so afraid when he saw his uncle Luke on Crait. 

With what was left of the Resistance cornered in the mine, he had known this would be his best chance for victory. This time he would not hesitate, the way he had when he killed Han Solo. He would not fail, the way he had with Leia and the Raddus, when even his change of heart had not kept her alive. This would be it, the final step in killing his past. Now he was the Supreme Leader and he could be whatever he wanted. 

He had been so calm, so sure of success at the beginning of the battle. Then he had seen the Millennium Falcon and lost his temper again, ordered his men to blow it out of the sky. He'd hated that ship, despaired of how it had taken his father away from him. Did he realize Rey was onboard? At that point, his head was filled with an angry buzzing and he wasn't thinking clearly. It would not have been the first time he would have done something in the heat of the moment that he would deeply regret. 

He regained his equilibrium. After the failed assault by the mono-skis, Kylo had thought through his strategy before issuing the order of “No quarter. No prisoners.” The Resistance had taken everything from him: his mother and father and now Rey. His father had been lost to him long before he fell into that chasm on Starkiller base, skewered by Kylo's own lightsaber. Even if Kylo had realized his mother was still alive, he felt like he had lost her to the Resistance too, years and years ago. Losing Rey to them was the last straw. She had betrayed him for the Resistance.

Then he had seen the lone figure emerging from the burning hole at the bottom of the huge door to the mine. It was unbelievable. Luke Skywalker had come to him. He would be able to kill Skywalker after all, despite not being able to find the planet where he had hidden. Luke had come to face him after all this time. 

His feeling of triumph quickly turned to terror when he saw Luke's face. It took him right back to that night when he had woken up with Skywalker holding the lightsaber over him. He had that thought they had built a rapport, that he could trust his uncle. Seeing him like that had turned his guts to water, and now it was happening again. He used the Force to stave off the sickness as much as he was able, then ordered every gun they had to fire on him. 

Here was another opportunity for Kylo to finally kill his past, not realizing what he really wanted to kill was his present. His uncle's failed murder attempt had been the turning point in his long journey to the Dark side. If Luke hadn't raised his lightsaber to Ben that night, none of the rest would have happened. He might be a Jedi today instead of some bastardized form of a Sith. He might have a life. He might be happy. Luke had ruined it all. Kylo held that train of thought far down in his consciousness as he raged.

The first AT-AT had fired alone. Then the others had begun to fire as well, but it felt like it wasn't enough. The terror and anger from that night held him in their grip all over again. It was as if it had never stopped happening. He was still trapped in that moment of realization that Snoke had been right all along: his uncle was afraid of his power, just like his parents had been. 

His uncle, his own blood, who was supposed to have been a safe haven for him, actually intended to kill him. His heart was hammering painfully, and he felt as if he couldn't breathe, as if he was choking. Sweat had formed all over his body, then became cold when his body suddenly chilled. 

He ordered them to devote more firepower to killing his uncle. In Kylo's mind and heart, Luke had become a monster of huge size and emotional weight. It would take everything he had to dispel it. 

Hux had intervened, had told Kylo that it was enough, but Kylo hadn't been able to listen. It had taken Hux yelling at Kylo's own men for him to calm down enough to focus.

Then Luke had emerged from the blowing clouds of dust, looking the same as he had the last time Kylo had seen him. It was impossible. He should have been pulverized. And he had made the little gesture of flicking dirt from his shoulder, showing Kylo just what he thought of him, of how little an impact Kylo was able to have on this legend from the past. He'd never been able to earn Skywalker's respect before, and he realized now he never would.

Kylo was able to recover some shaky semblance of calm as he lowered himself to a seated position, though his pulse still pounded and his mouth still quivered. An observer watching Kylo would have seen his lips move as he tried to talk himself down, but no one heard him. “It's okay. You're alright. It's just Luke. You faced him before and you won.” 

He knew what he had to do, but he didn't know if he had the strength to do it. Again. When would he ever beat this pull to the Light, this stupid and useless feeling for others? He breathed deeply to steady himself, then used all his emotions to connect to the Dark side. 

Then he finally came up with the strength to face his maker once again, the man who had instigated the incident that had changed his life irrevocably. He gave the order to bring himself down to Luke's level, so he could fight him one-on-one. If Luke was using a Jedi mind trick to protect himself, maybe Kylo could defeat him individually. 

He ordered Hux to keep the guns trained on the door, but not to advance until he gave the command. Obviously, this had turned into a personal battle instead of a military one, and the AT-ATs would have no effect until he had negated Luke's powers.

Hux had the nerve to tell him not to get distracted and focus on the goal of decimating the enemy. Kylo did not want to argue about it. He merely used the Force to shove his nemesis into a control console. Defeating Luke was what he needed to concentrate on. 

His command shuttle had landed on the planet, and Kylo had gone out to meet Luke alone. He reminded himself he was Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order, and that he had just killed his own master in the subtlest of moves before going on to take out Snoke's Praetorian Guard. He was younger and more fit than Luke. He was stronger with the Force. He could do this. 

The wind whipped his hair and his cape as he found something cutting to say to Skywalker. “Did you come back to say you forgive me? To save my soul?” That would remind him of who had triumphed the night Luke had tried to murder him. 

Luke had denied it. Then Kylo shook off his cloak in an unconscious echo of his grandfather, Anakin. He shifted his weight to his right foot while simultaneously igniting his lightsaber. He held his saber up to his face as a line-of-sight, readied himself, then moved full speed with his sword in an overhand grip. When that pass failed to connect with Skywalker, muscle memory from thousands of hours of training automatically turned him to face his foe and slash again. And miss again. 

He ran at Skywalker, and this time Luke used the Force to bend backward impossibly to duck, then twist and land on his feet. How had the old man done it? Surely he wasn't still that spry! 

Luke turned and faced him over the glow of his own blue lightsaber. Kylo found himself breathing hard. 

“I failed you, Ben. I'm sorry.” Luke's voice had became lower and sounded sincere towards the end. 

Kylo was unable to escape his flashback. He was yelling at everyone who had ever deserted him: his mother, his father, and even Rey. “I'm sure you are!” I'll make you sorry, the unspoken thought continued. 

“The Resistance is dead,” Kylo went on, somewhat calmer. “The war is over. And when I kill you, I will have killed the last Jedi.” 

His face had been twisted in fierce hatred, despite the catch in his voice. He wanted to be brave now, the way Rey had been in the Throne Room against Snoke, trying so valiantly against terrible odds. At least his rage kept him from crying.

“Amazing,” Luke had countered. “Every word of what you just said was wrong. The Rebellion is born today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi.”

Luke spoke to him as if he were a child again. The condescension burned in Kylo's chest. He wasn't a helpless boy any longer. He would burn everything down if he could not have the love he needed to survive. 

”I'll destroy her. And you. And all of it.”

Luke surprised him by turning off his saber and coming out of his fighting stance. “No,” he replied. “Strike me down in anger and I will always be with you. . . just like your father.”

Kylo's fist clenched the handle of his lightsaber even more tightly. He launched himself toward his uncle, screaming and bringing his lightsaber into position only at the last minute. He swung hard, as if to cut Skywalker in two, the way he had done to Snoke. But he encountered no resistance. His foot slid in the salt, revealing the red soil underneath.

He was out of breath, incredulous. He had given all he had to this final effort, and nothing at all had happened. Kylo could not believe his eyes. He straightened up, his gaze never leaving Luke. He walked toward him, saber held out horizontally, until the tip passed effortlessly through Luke's body, making no impact whatsoever. 

Then he realized Luke's feet had not disturbed the salt, had revealed no red dirt. There was no substance to his form. Kylo realized he had been fooled again. “No,” he said softly. 

His uncle looked resigned. “See you around, kid,” he said, calling Kylo the same nickname Han had given Luke. Then his form had faded away into nothing. 

Kylo stayed calm for the moment, so many thoughts going through his head. Then he understood what Luke had done. He had stalled him and the First Order so that the Resistance would have time to escape from the mine. Kylo shrieked his denial. 

He knew he had failed, but he picked his cape up, put it back on, and had the snow troopers follow him inside. He entered the office area of the mine himself, but waved his troopers back. 

He could almost feel his mother's presence -- still alive, to his great surprise – in the control room where they had made what they had thought would be their last stand. Something glinted on the dusty floor, and Kylo knelt, as he had last knelt before Snoke, to see what it was. 

Just as he did so, the silence of his Force bond with Rey descended again. His sense of longing and abandonment was renewed. He could see her in the doorway of the Falcon, and he knew she could see him too. Her mouth tightened, resolute, as she closed the ramp and shut herself away from him. Leaving him alone and abandoned. As ever.

Just then, the chained dice he had seen and picked up from the floor faded away into nothing, the way Luke had. Like always, everything he actually needed slipped through his fingers. 

Because in reality, he had obtained the things he had set out to acquire: power, protection, the freedom to do as he wished. And yet his soul was desolate. The things he had dismissed as unimportant -- love, family, attachment -- had actually been what he had wanted all along. Instead all he was left with was heartbreak and despair. He wondered if he would be able to admit that to himself now, or if he would continue to deny his wounded heart.

Kylo had believed that he needed Rey the way a fire needed oxygen, but when he lost her, his internal flames blazed even hotter, until they burned themselves out in a flurry of ashes. 

She was a thing of Light, a thing of love, just as he was a creation of of the Dark. He had tried to hide his both love and his light, to keep them secret, but eventually they had slipped away.


End file.
